BUILDING ON THE ARTS: A special report.; Cities Are Fostering the Arts As a Way to Save Downtown

By BRUCE WEBER

Published: November 18, 1997

SAN JOSE, Calif.—
In this city in the heart of Silicon Valley, where the rise in property values (and taxes) over the last decade has fueled a mammoth redevelopment effort, the city government has built from scratch, among other things, a children's museum, a new wing for the art museum, and, opening next month, a 525-seat theater that will be the new home of the San Jose Repertory Theater. All in a downtown that was, a dozen years ago, in the words of one city official, ''a wasteland, chaos everywhere you looked.''

Under construction in the same general neighborhood is a technology museum, a community paean to the industry that has spurred the city's resurgence. The building is scheduled to open next fall, and the cost, $43 million, is being covered by the city. Another city-financed project, the $9.1 million Mexican Cultural Heritage Gardens, with performance space for local dance and drama troupes, is to open in 1999 in another rundown district.

''We want our downtown to have the support of future generations,'' said Frank Taylor, since 1979 the executive director of the redevelopment agency. ''We lost an entire generation of children, who grew up ashamed of their downtown. There is no better way to get children acquainted with a city than through cultural facilities, through art, through music, those experiences they can share. So that's been our approach.''

In a report titled ''American Canvas,'' the National Endowment of the Arts recently described the arts in the United States as being vastly undersupported, and the Federal Government continues to debate withdrawing from its already modest role as bolsterer of the nation's creative artists. But it is one measure of the complexity of the role of the arts in this country that San Jose is voting another way, aggressively using the arts to fuel its growth.

And though this city's investment in the arts is extraordinary, it is hardly unique. From Anchorage to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., cities have recently built or are in the midst of building arts palaces.

One of the most visible examples of big arts dollars being pressed into the service of local uplift is Newark, where the new $180 million New Jersey Center for the Performing Arts opened on Oct. 18 to considerable fanfare and great hope that it will turn the fortunes of a downtown area stagnant since the 1960's; more than $100 million of the cost came from the state. In September, just an hour's drive north of here, the historic War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco reopened after a refurbishment costing nearly $90 million, more than half of which was financed by a city bond issue. The same month, Kansas City opened the first American museum devoted entirely to jazz, paid for by the city. And earlier this year, Chicago announced its $18.8 million contribution to a new building for the Goodman Theater, a prominent nonprofit venue.

Philadelphia is in the midst of a $330 million project, the Avenue of the Arts. And Miami awaits ground-breaking on a mammoth performance center that would provide a home for its symphony and its opera.

''You could easily say there has been $4 billion to $5 billion in arts capital building in the last decade alone,'' said Steve Wolff, the president of AMS Planning and Research, a consulting concern in Fairfield, Conn., that specializes in capital building projects in the arts. ''I can add up the first $3 billion in 30 seconds without even thinking.''

Beyond the big-ticket building projects are myriad other efforts in which cities have imposed designated taxes on hotel rooms and amusements, offered incentives to developers and aggressively leveraged property tax revenue to raise money. They have created arts districts, financed arts festivals and promoted regularly scheduled cultural events. Often they have invested large amounts of public money in museums, concert halls and theaters to create tourist destinations, burnish regional reputations and stimulate blighted neighborhoods.

White Elephants? Hard Lessons From the Past

Cities have long been known for following the modish urban redevelopment concept of the day, only to find their tomorrows beset by the flaws in those ideas. Urban renewal left vast empty tracts. New highways wound up speeding the flow out of cities rather than traffic into them. Downtown office development bred design sterility and nighttime ghost towns. Whether reliance on the arts will have a similar legacy in many locales is an open question.

Many fear that without solid indigenous programming, an interested audience to build on, and links between the projects and the fabric of the city, the grandest of the arts projects can turn into white elephants. Indeed, since Lincoln Center opened in New York City in 1962, more than one city intent on replicating its success has built an arts complex that remains underused and cut off from the city.

''We have a tendency in America, if we have a success in one place, we want to replicate it,'' said James W. Hughes, dean of the Edward Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. ''But there is no panacea. Arts centers are not necessarily sufficient in and of themselves to cause revitalization.''